Andrew Lilico: Are all humans people?

I view every human animal as a person. Throughout history this has been a minority point of view. At almost all times and places, most people have considered that there were human animals that were not people — women, slaves, children, prisoners of war, members of certain races, members of certain religions, criminals, and committers of certain moral offences have all been regarded as less-than-fully-people. To be a person required something more than just being human.

Today the most clear-cut class of human animals not normally regarded as people are the human embryos. Many things are permitted to be done to these human animals that would not normally be thought unproblematic as things done to people — killing them; conducting medical experiments upon them; using their organs; and so on — and there are complex policies developed to regulate these activities (including, for example, the judgement of the HFEA last week that hybrid embryos can be created). It does not follow from my belief that all human animals are people that no human animal should ever be killed or experimented upon or its organs used to help others — quite the reverse: we believe that, under certain circumstances all of these things can be done to people. But I do believe that the same kinds of principles that guide and limit when we kill adults, experiment upon them, or use them for organs should also guide and limit our treatment of embryos.

In a moment I shall ponder some potential add-on features that might be thought necessary before a human animal really becomes a person. But first I wish to dispel a certain confusion that some readers might have. When we discuss what extra might be needed for a human animal to become a person we shall be discussing issues of philosophy, ethics, politics. But some readers may wonder whether a human embryo really counts as a human animal at all. This is not a matter of ethical debate. It is simply a scientific fact, given only the following definition: a human animal is a working instance of a certain kind of creature with a certain DNA structure.

Animals vary enormously — some have only one or two cells, like the Myxozoa (having only a few cells does not disqualify a creature from being an animal); others such as pigs and cows are complex many-celled organisms that have a wide array of other creatures living inside them — including symbiotic bacteria and parasitic creatures such as tapeworms (living inside another creature does not disqualify one from being an animal).

Breeding strategies amongst animals vary. For example, some, e.g. chickens, produce external eggs with a hard protective barrier and internal food to sustain the growing infant. Others, such as certain toads, carry their eggs in the toad’s mouth or implanted in the mother’s back. Marsupial infants exit the mother’s body early in the lifecycle and are thereafter carried in a pouch. The true mammals, such as human beings, do not have their infants grow in solid eggs or in a pouch. Instead, the infant attaches itself to the inside of the mother, taking nourishment from its host rather like other parasitic lifeforms such as the tapeworm. But that feature of the mammalian lifecycle does not create some doubt that the human animal is then alive. Like other parasites, it needs its host for sustenance and can only survive in the environment for which it is designed — but what of that? How long would you, Dear Reader, survive in deep space or at the bottom of the Pacific ocean? Does the fact that you can survive only in the environments for which your body is designed create any doubt as to whether you are truly alive?

No. There is no doubt that an embryo is a human animal — and indeed even arch-pro-abortionists such as Richard Dawkins (whose “The God Delusion” was apparently a favourite of Labour MPs this summer) are straightforward on this point. And it should be just as clear that the human embryo is the same animal as its later adult — just as a caterpillar is the same animal as its butterfly.

So what must be added to animalhood before a human animal is a person? Probably the most common idea is this: only when the human animal is combined with a “soul” or “mind” does it become a person; it is hard to say precisely when in its development an embryo acquires a soul/mind, but it is probably something to do with when some part of the brain develops — whatever bit of the brain “connects” the animal to its soul/mind. Many members of many religions would hold such a view. I, however, am entirely unconvinced as to the truth or usefulness as a concept of the “soul” or “mind”, understood in this exotic other-worldly sense. I respect the beliefs of these religious people, but I don’t share their religion and I see no more reason to allow them to kill their infant animals because of this religious belief than I would if their beliefs extended to child sacrifice or widow-burning. Religious toleration has its limits — this is one of them.

A closely connected idea is that in order to be a person one must be capable of behaving closely enough to a normal adult. What, then, of someone in a completely “vegetative” state — incapable of talking, nodding, kissing, running? Would such a human animal cease to be a person? Well…if that state were permanent or sufficiently persistent, then perhaps we do think that personhood is lost. After all, such human animals are often left to die or even helped along the way. But suppose that such a vegetative state were only temporary, so that normal behaviour might be possible in the future. Would we say that a human being in a such a temporary vegetative state is not truly a person — is perhaps, at most, a “potential person”? I would not. Someone in a temporary vegetative state remains fully — not merely potentially — a person. Likewise, a working embryo is not a potential person. It is a person.

Perhaps you think that other behaviour is irrelevant, provided that there is sufficient mental function? Will you become only a potential person, then, if you fall into a temporary coma? How clever would you need to be to qualify as a person? How should we describe a human animal with an IQ of 50? Perhaps you think that to be a person you must look like a person? So is a severe burns victim not a person? or someone born without arms? If you are in an accident and your jaw and nose are lost, will you cease to be a person? Perhaps it matters whether the animal can feel pain or whether its death would be regretted (as Dawkins suggests)? So is a friendless tramp not a person if you could kill him painlessly?

I put it to you, Dear Reader, that you will struggle to find some principle that must be added to animalhood to produce the person that you would be able to apply consistently to anything other than the embryo. And if it is applicable only to the embryo, it should be clear that all your principle amounts to is the insistence that embryos don’t count as people — without any reason why not.

All I have tried to urge in this article is that all human animals are people — that there is no principle we would find attractive that would exclude some human animals from counting as people. As I mentioned above, it does not follow from this that we should never kill embryos, never experiment upon them, never use them to help cure or mend others. But I do urge the thought that when we decide policy on when to kill, experiment upon or otherwise use embryos, we should make our decisions understanding that we are discussing what happens to a person, just as much as you or I.

Comments

'I view every human animal as a person.'

I view every sentient human animal as a person. It drills down to how we define sentience rather than a sum of human shaped components that would arguably would qualify the great apes as human animals.

A human animal is not necessarily a human being. The concept of being involves consciousness, sensory perception and a unique cocktail of rational and emotional intelligence. This ability to rationalise led to the evolution of the moral and ethical perspectives that enlighten our conscious, sentient, concepts of right and wrong.

To kill any human being, I believe, I judge, to be wrong. If I believed as informed by the empiricism of medical science that a 28 day old human animal was sentient, as defined, then I would oppose abortion. I do not. I believe that a female human being has the absolute, individual, right to decide.

Yes, as in all things, there should be checks and balances and this should also apply to medical research but I do not accept that a human animal's rights should be equated or allowed to transcend the rights of a human being.

We live in a world of inverted values. A world in which the life of a murderer is seen as precious and he/she is consequently not executed and this stands in stark contrast with the life of an unborn child which is seen in legal terms as having no value and can be terminated for something as trivial as economic expediency.

The question of 'Life' perplexes. For example insects exist and run like programmed machines, but they don't have what we would call a life. However the same cannot be said of an animal like a dog, which athough operating on raw instict does appear to have an inquisitive nature, even personality, and exists on a far higher level than an insect and does have 'a life' of sorts.

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of mercy killing. Such concepts find their birth in intellectual circles and end up in death at places like Hadamar.

Although you never state it, you appear to use "personhood" to mean "possessing full human rights", the question you're interested in is who gets full legal rights, and your answer is that embryos should have the same rights as born humans. Fair enough, but your terminology muddies the waters.

"How should we describe a human animal with an IQ of 50?"

You're probably thinking of people with severe organic mental retardation, but in fact plenty of completely normal, functional people have measured IQs around 50. It's a very dangerous 'ethnocentric' assumption that a low IQ score necessarily indicates organic mental retardation. The Khoi San of South Africa as a group have measured median IQ in the mid 50s, so about a quarter have measurable IQ of 50 or less, but they are as much normal people, and as functional, as any reader of this board.

You may be interested by the Aristotelian ideas of potentiality and actuality. You actually drew upon it by asking if someone could be a potential person. The answer would be yes, an embryo is a potential person, depending on the definition of person. But that doesn't make them any less of a person at that point. The same applies to someone in PVS, they still have the potential to become (again in this case) an actual person, thus they are still a person.

On a proper methodology, IQ scores are normalised to 100, so someone scoring 50 would be many standard deviations below the norm. The measurement issue you point at is merely a weakness in assessment methodologies - it's a measurement issue, not a concept issue.

Most importantly, it doesn't affect my point, which is that if we make being sufficiently clever a criterion for personhood, then there is the possibility, in principle, of certain adult humans not qualifying - are we prepared to bite this bullet and say that they are not strictly speaking people? I'm not.

Is someone in a temporary vegetative state sentient? If so, in what does his/her sentience consist?

According to the Glasgow Coma Score a total of three would indicate minimal sentient activity in terms of Best Eye Response, Best Verbal Response and Best Motor Response. This may be temporary or it may be permanent and irreversible. To answer your question, in terms of 'being', then an embryo would score three and, therefore, purposeful sentience is absent.

This would lead to follow-on question about the contradiction implicit in the relative value of a 28 day old human animal compared to a coma victim. I would suggest that neither should be terminated unless there is a good reason to do so. It is defining 'good' that is the problem and probably where we differ.

This is such a thorny subject. How far does intellect to relate to consciousness and understanding? A few years ago I remember hearing a presenter reading out letter that a woman sent to radio Merseyside in which she said that her son, who had down's syndrome, was on the electoral register and that he regularly voted. So obviously that man obviously had some idea about who he favoured among political parties unlike many apathetical able-minded people who don't understand politics and don't care either. Concepts like the autistic savant show that we really don't understand what we mean by the mind, by consciousness or by intelligence.

A fascinating article, Andrew. I believe in the personhood of all 'human animals' -- but then I also believe in the existence of the human soul. If I didn't, I wonder on what basis I could consider a zygote to be a person -- as all that is scientifically observable is a single-celled organism, albeit one with a human genome. The only non-religious argument for recognising the personhood of human life in its earliest stages that I can think of is the impossibility of drawing a line at any other stage than the creation of a new human life.

I agree that ‘human’ is a zoological term and that an embryo is human in the same sense that an unborn foal is a horse.

However, when it comes to defining what is a person I do not think you can separate this from the general consensus of what is a person. A person is a person when others view it as a person. There is no hard and fast rule. It is not clear-cut or tidy; but what else is in life. It differs from society to society and it changes with medical knowledge. Often, it is an emotional not an intellectual decision. The general consensus at the moment in our country accepts experimentation on cadavers. This has not always been the case. The general consensus also accepts experimentation on embryos, in the case of medical research, but would not accept experimentation on those born but in a vegetative state.
I mention this as the consensus because that is the general view of the mass of people in this society. However, it does not mean everyone agrees, nor should they. However, one of the arts of the legislator is to ensure that the law reflects this consensus.

Even when you are accepted as a person, not all persons have the same rights. A minor has different rights from an adult. A citizen or one country has different rights from the citizen in another country. Andrew, I think this is what you mentioned in your first paragraph. I think you would be hard pushed to name a society where women or slaves were not regarded as people but they were people who had different rights from others and often many fewer rights

I think you mean extra-legal moral rights - presumanbly you accept that there are legal rights commonly referred to as 'human rights', such as the right not to be killed.

"On a proper methodology, IQ scores are normalised to 100, so someone scoring 50 would be many standard deviations below the norm. The measurement issue you point at is merely a weakness in assessment methodologies - it's a measurement issue, not a concept issue."

Not really - IQ tests primarily measure certain forms of analytical intelligence. Where tests are normed so median UK IQ is 100, some population groups elsewhere in the world score much lower, such as the San bushmen I mentioned whose median score is in the mid 50s, 3 SDs below the UK median. This isn't a question of cultural bias as such, it's a question of what ability is being measured. See eg this by James Flynn on the 'Flynn effect' - rising scores in areas of mental ability common in industrialised society:

"Most importantly, it doesn't affect my point, which is that if we make being sufficiently clever a criterion for personhood, then there is the possibility, in principle, of certain adult humans not qualifying - are we prepared to bite this bullet and say that they are not strictly speaking people? I'm not."

I agree. I think 'humanity' and 'personhood' are closely linked concepts. I don't regard a newly fertilised embryo as a human person though, it's a potential human person. Frankly I don't think my 3 month old son is a fully human person yet either, though he's getting more personality each day. And it's perhaps noteworthy that he does not yet receive full legal protection as a person under English law, due to the law on maternal infanticide - mothers who kill their babies are treated more leniently than other murderers.

I didn't and don't propose, by suggesting that all human animals are persons, that therefore all should have the same legal rights. For example, I do not believe that six year old children should have the legal right to vote.

Terry> "I think you would be hard pushed to name a society where women or slaves were not regarded as people"

Aristotle was not of the view that it was clear that women had souls. Similarly, the cry of the anti-slavery movement - "All men are men" - was precisely that we should regard all humans as people, for the true personhood of African slaves was similarly doubted. In many societies Jews were not regarded as strictly "human" - i.e. strictly speaking people.

To those of you asking why I use the term "person": I use the terms "person" and "people" rather than "human" in this article mainly because asking the question "Are all human animals human" seems rather too close to a tautology or an exercise in syllogistic logic. But what I am trying to argue for is substantive, not merely formal.